By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Saudi Arabia has replaced its intelligence chief, who is widely seen as the architect of the kingdom’s interventionist policy on the Syrian civil war. The government-owned Saudi Press Agency announced on Tuesday that prince Bandar bin Sultan had been “relieved of his post at his own request”. Bandar was born in 1946 to a concubine of crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, 12th son of Saudi monarch King Abdulaziz. In 1983, Bandar was appointed ambassador to the United States, a post he held until 2005. He developed numerous connections in Washington and rose to become a leading operator in Middle East affairs, enjoying to this day very close personal ties with Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. In 2012 he was appointed director of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, the country’s primary intelligence organization. Since that time, he has been the primary planner of Riyadh’s hawkish policy on the Syrian civil war, which has been to openly support the rebel groups fighting to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia began supplying weapons, cash and intelligence to the Syrian rebels as soon as Bandar took control of the country’s intelligence apparatus. But his once close relations with Washington went sour last year, when he described US President Barack Obama’s refusal to launch military strikes on Syria as a “major shift” in American Middle East policy. He also angered the US by criticizing it’s rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is Riyadh’s major regional adversary. Perhaps most important of all, Bandar appears to have underestimated the strength of the al-Assad administration and over-confidently advising King Abdullah in 2012 that the Syrian government’s days were numbered. The stalemate in the Syrian civil war seems to have frustrated the Saudi government, which began to gradually distancing itself from Bandar’s musings since January. Read more of this post

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
For over two decades, America’s relations with its most important Arab ally were primarily mediated by just one man: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. But on June 26, 2005, Bandar, a personal friend of the Bush family, submitted his diplomatic resignation, after being recalled to Riyadh by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Almost immediately, Bandar, known for years in Washington’s diplomatic circles as a flamboyant socialite, disappeared from public view. It is said that he faced serious health problems, going in and out of hospitals. Others claim that he fell out of favor with Saudi Arabia’s autocratic ruling elite, and in 2009 there were even unconfirmed reports that he was under house arrest after allegedly trying to organize a military coup against King Abdullah. Last week, however, Bandar returned to the limelight in spectacular fashion: in a plainly worded statement, Saudi authorities announced that the Prince had been appointed Director General of the Mukhabarat Al A’amah, the Kingdom’s main intelligence agency.

To those who remember Bandar from his Washington days, which were filled with drinking and partying, it may seem incredible that the “peasant prince”, whose mother was one of Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s countless underage concubines, is now heading Saudi intelligence, in what is perhaps the most challenging period in the Kingdom’s history. Read more of this post

[UNCONFIRMED] Saudi opposition group claims Prince Bandar under house arrest. Saad al-Faqih, head of the Saudi opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, claims that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, and a close ally of the Bush family and former CIA leadership, is under house arrest after reportedly trying to “provoke 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah”.

Ukrainian diplomat expelled from Russia named. An Ukrainian source has named one of the two Ukrainian diplomats to be expelled by Russia as part of the tit-for-tat row as Igor Berezkin. The expulsions follow a similar move by Ukrainian authorities who requested that Russia’s consul general in Odessa, Alexander Grachev and a senior counselor at the Russian embassy, Vladimir Lysenko, leave Ukraine over accusations that they had been involved in work in violation of their diplomatic status (i.e. espionage).

US Vice President refuses comment on CIA-DNI dispute. Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Biden refused to take sides on the ongoing turf battle between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, over who should have a say in appointing CIA station chiefs around the world. Biden simply said he preferred to “comment on that next week”.

Did former CIA director George Tenet get drunk at the palatial house of Prince Bandar, former Saudi ambassador to the US? Tenet is apparently disputing it, but he is not disputing that he spent the night there.